Almost everything written about pack opening is about Pokémon, because that is where the volume is. But the same sites rip football, baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey, and we record those openings the same way. So we can answer a question nobody else has: does the sports side actually pay back better?
The measured answer
| What was opened | Pulls recorded | Paid back |
|---|---|---|
| One Piece | 483 | 127.5% |
| Riftbound | 1,639 | 108.3% |
| Magic | 298 | 105.6% |
| Dragon Ball | 498 | 99.9% |
| Pokemon | 32,103 | 99.7% |
| Basketball | 1,373 | 86.8% |
| Football | 1,882 | 83.9% |
| Baseball | 1,376 | 74.2% |
That table is generated when you load the page, from the last 24 hours of openings on every site we track. Paid back is the card value that came out divided by the pack price that went in, counting every pull, hits and misses alike.
The pattern we keep seeing is that the sports rows sit above the Pokémon row. Not by a trivial amount either. Whether that holds on the day you read this is exactly why the table is live rather than typed.
Why sports might genuinely pay back more
There is a plausible reason, and it is about how prices are formed rather than about generosity. Pokémon card prices are extremely well known. Every site, every buyer and every seller is looking at the same market data, so a Pokémon pack can be priced very precisely against what is likely to come out of it.
Sports card pricing is messier. There are far more cards, far more parallels and numbered variants, and far less agreement about what any given card is worth. When pricing is imprecise, the margin built into the pack is imprecise too, and it can land either side of where the operator intended.
Three reasons to be careful with this
First, sample size. Pokémon is the overwhelming majority of what we record. The sports categories are a fraction of that, and hockey in particular is small enough that a single good pull moves its number several points. The pull count sits beside every row in the table for exactly this reason.
Second, card value is not cash. Everything in that table is measured at market price. Turning a sports card into money involves fees, postage and finding a buyer, and the buyer pool for a mid-tier sports parallel is thinner than for a Pokémon chase card. The gap between paper value and realised value is wider on the sports side, which eats into the advantage.
Third, it is a short window. A day is a day. If you are making a decision on this, look at the figure across several visits rather than once, and give more weight to the rows with the biggest pull counts.
What this does not cover
We do not hold prices for sports singles the way we do for Pokémon, so we cannot yet tell you what a specific rookie card is worth. That is a genuine gap and we are straight about it rather than filling the page with numbers we cannot stand over.
What we can do is measure what comes out of the packs, which is the harder half and the half nobody else publishes at all.
Related: what packs pay back overall, every pack ranked, and hobby versus retail on the sports side.
Questions people also ask
Do football packs pay back more than Pokemon?
On our recorded openings they have. The table above is live, so you can check whether that still holds on the day you read this.
Why would sports packs return more?
Most likely because sports card pricing is messier than Pokemon pricing, so the margin built into a pack is less precise and can land either side of where the operator intended.
Can I see sports card values on PackSpy?
Not yet. We record sports pulls but we do not hold sports card prices, and we would rather say so than publish numbers we cannot stand over.
The short version
On our recorded openings sports packs have been paying back better than Pokémon, with soccer leading and hockey trailing on a small sample. The likely reason is looser pricing rather than greater generosity, and the advantage narrows once you account for actually selling the cards.